Advice to Atlanta Braves Fans: Don’t Stay up for West Coast Road Games

By David Miller

Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves have a very comfortable lead as we near the mid-point of June. Considering they were picked by almost nobody to win the National League East and the fact that key contributors have struggled, that is really good news. The starting staff is getting better with each week as now veteran Tim Hudson is showing how important his capability is to the team as well as young starter Julio Teheran emerging. Considering all of the things that are going well for the Braves this year, why in the world can’t they win on the west coast?

Honestly the Braves struggled on the road for most of the season thus far but those struggles seem to increase when they face road games against the NL West. Beginning a baseball game at the time they are usually packing up for the night might be one factor as they are starting the game around 10:00 pm their time. I know they are professionals but the effect of the time change has to be there to some degree.

Whatever the issue is, they still have success on the west coast but it just seems to be very difficult to get. They have lost the first two of the San Diego Padres series and four of the first six on the short road trip to the pacific coast. My advice is just not to watch those games. Honestly most Braves fans will have to stay up late to watch those games anyway so why bother? Get up the next morning and check the score. Then if you want to see what happened you can watch the highlights but you don’t have to agonize through the game.

I see little reason to stress yourself, as a Braves fan, over a few games on the west coast when the Braves will likely win 90% of the coming home games over the next month anyway. One last interesting note. The final game of the Padres series is an afternoon game. It is starting after 3:30 eastern time meaning that the time change problem with playing a game at 10:00 pm their time won’t come into play. It will be interesting to see how they play in this game versus the others in the series. Either way fans just need to shrug it off and look forward to more dominating performances at home and in other road games which are getting much easier for the Braves of late.